'During the course of the seventeenth century, within the scholastic tradition itself, commentaries on Aristotle's natural philosophical works increasingly gave way to textbooks and compendia organized along thematic lines' (Dear 1985, 161).

Summary The genealogy of observation as a philosophical term goes back to the ancient Greek astronomical and medical traditions, and the revival of the concept in the Renaissance also happened in the astronomical and medical context. This essay focuses primarily on the medical genealogy of the concept of observation. In ancient Greek culture, an elaboration of the concept of observation (tērēsis) first emerged in the Hellenistic age with the medical sect of the Empirics, to be further developed by the ancient (...) Sceptics. Basically unknown in the Middle Ages, the Empirics’ conceptualisation of tērēsis trickled back into Western medicine in the fourteenth century, but its meaning seems to have been fully recovered by European scholars only in the 1560s, concomitantly with the first Latin translation of the works of Sextus Empiricus. As a category originally associated with medical Scepticism, observatio was a new entry in early modern philosophy. Although the term gained wide currency in general scholarly usage in the seventeenth century, its assimilation into standard philosophical language was very slow. In fact, observatio does not even appear as an entry in the philosophical dictionaries until the eighteenth century—with one significant exception, the medical lexica, which featured the lemma, reporting its ancient Empiric definition, as early as 1564. (shrink)

After a brief account of the uncertainty of medicine in early modern thought, this paper focuses on two supple, sophisticated accounts of medicine by ‘non-medical’ writers – Michel de Montaigne's views of medical theory and medical practice and Francis Bacon's proposals for renovating both – in which the claims of individual sufferers are set against the normativity of medicine as a whole. From around 1500 to around 1680, in the common ensemble of both learned and popular invective, medicine was disparaged (...) as poor philosophy and worse practice, even as the ‘lowest of professions’. In remarkably broad, elegant interventions, Montaigne argues that medicine is based on ‘examples and experience’ , impugning its universalizing claims with the tractable experience of his own embodiment, with his own historia and consilium, while Francis Bacon enlists dietetics, Hippocratic case-taking and medical history in his broad programme for the reform of medicine. He more or less accepts Montaigne's argument for particularity in medical theory and practice, but presses the particular into service in his reformist programme. Like many sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century scholars and physicians frustrated with Galenic methods and models, both turn to Hippocratic practice and to hygiene and dietetics as salves for an ailing discipline. Finally, I argue that both writers enquire into viable means for inflecting learned medicine with particular experience, and both settle on rhetorical tools – analogy and exemplarity – as the means by which universalized medical models might be particularized or reformed. (shrink)

Early modern commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics contain a lively debate on whether experience is ‘rational’, so that it may count as ‘proto-knowledge’, or whether experience is ‘non-rational’, so that experience must be regarded as a primarily perceptual process. If experience is just a repetitive apprehension of sensory contents, the connection of terms in a scientific proposition can be known without any experiential input, as the ‘non-rational’ Scotists state. ‘Rational’ Thomists believe that all principles of scientific knowledge must rely on experiential (...) data, because experience consists in an apprehension of facts rather than objects. And it is only apprehension of facts that can justify knowledge of principles. In this context, the role of mathematical knowledge is special, because it is self-evident. So Thomists must either show that mathematical principles do rely on experience, or that they do not express knowledge claims. (shrink)

Peter Anstey has suggested that in our analyses of early modern natural philosophy we should abandon a frequently used distinction: that between rationalism and empiricism. He argues that we should replace it with another distinction, that between experimental and speculative natural philosophy. The second distinction, he argues, was not only widely used at the time, but has a greater explanatory range. It follows, he suggests, that it is a better way of “carving up” the writings of that period.It is clear (...) that a distinction between experimental and speculative natural philosophy did become common in the late seventeenth-century. But I am less convinced that it is a useful one. This.. (shrink)

THE LIFE Of FRANCIS BACON, LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND. THE ancient Egyptians had a law, which ordained that the actions and characters of their dead ...

Francis Bacon, the English philosopher, statesman and jurist, is best known for developing the empiricist method which forms the basis of modern science. Bacon's writings concentrated on philosophy and judicial reform. His most significant work is the Instauratio Magna comprising two parts - The Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum. The first part is noteworthy as the first major philosophical work published in English. James Spedding and his co-editors arranged this fourteen-volume edition, published in London between 1857 and 1874, (...) not in chronological order but by subject matter, so that different volumes would appeal to different audiences. The material is divided into three parts: philosophy and general literature; legal works; and letters, speeches and tracts relating to politics. Volume 1, published 1857, contains the biography by Bacon's secretary, William Rawley, and part 1 of the philosophical works included in the Instauratio Magna. (shrink)

Kant and Sartre are two of the most significant figures in modern philosophy, and yet there has, until very recently, been little comparative research undertaken on them. Despite dealing with many shared philosophical issues, they have traditionally been taken to be too opposed to each other to render any search for possible parallels between their works a useful enterprise. Indeed, Sartre is often taken to be one of Kant’s most vocal critics in the literature, and as rather indebted to other (...) major figures, such as Husserl and Heidegger. As a consequence, often, where comparative analysis has been done upon Kant and Sartre, the emphasis has been on their differences, rather than on their similarities. However, as recent research has begun to show, the story is not that straightforward and there is much to be explored with regard to parallels between Kant and Sartre. Baiasu has characterised Sartre’s relation to Kant as one of an “anxiety of influence” – Sartre desires to explicitly distance himself from Kant, but this obscures some deeper underlying parallels between them1. Such parallels can form a foundation for productive dialogue, more widely, between the schools of Kantian “Critical philosophy” and existentialism2. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the relation between Christian Wolff's philosophy and the methodological views of early modern experimental philosophers. The chapter argues for three claims. First, Wolff's system relies on experience at every step and his views on experiments, observations, hypotheses, and the a priori are in line with those of experimental philosophers. Second, the study of Wolff's views demonstrates the influence of experimental philosophy in early eighteenth-century Germany. Third, references to Wolff's empiricism and rationalism are best identified or replaced with (...) references to his endorsement of the tenets of experimental philosophers and of a mathematical demonstrative method. (shrink)